Police to investigate complaint filed in zoning dispute

Bartlesville Police Department investigators are looking into a complaint from local property owners alleging that the City Council violated the state’s Open Meetings Act when it voted on a zoning request for property located on Minnesota Avenue during a public meeting on Nov. 4, 2013.

Police Chief Tom Holland said the department received the 26-page complaint on Thursday from property owner Terry Grogan and local activist Joel Rabin. Both have spoken numerous times during City Council meetings about the issue.

Grogran and Rabin say they represent eight other property owners who are upset about the rezoning of property near Grogan’s home on Minnesota Avenue, located in northeast Bartlesville.

The council voted 4-1 in November 2013 to rezone an 8.6-acre tract of land, currently owned by Armstrong Bank, from residential agriculture to C-5 commercial zoning.

According to the complaint, the property owners have “actively and publicly fought for almost two years against the Bank’s rezoning requests.”

The agenda for the Nov. 4, 2013, meeting in question stated that the council intended to consider an appeal of a Metropolitan Area Planning Commission decision to deny rezoning of a 19-acre tract of land from residential agriculture to M-1/PUD (Light Industrial).

During the November meeting, Community Development Director Lisa Beeman told the council that Armstrong Bank had requested modifying its original request to C-5 zoning on 8.6 acres — changes not indicated on the meeting agenda.

When the site was annexed into the city in 1982, the residential agriculture zoning placed on it did not comply with the industrial use of the property so the site became “a legal, non-conforming use,” Beeman said at that time.

Zoning regulations state that a legal, non-conforming use may remain, provided there not be a period of six calendar months where such use has been voluntarily discontinued, Beeman explained.

Armstrong Bank officials said the non-conforming use had continued with the bank actively working to sell the property. No additional approvals were required but bank officials wanted to proceed with the rezoning application.

Rabin told the council on Jan. 6 that their November 2013 meeting agenda item gave notice of an appeal of the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission decision. He said he thought the council’s approval of a different zoning than what was listed on the agenda exceeded the notice given to the public.

Rabin and Grogan contend that Bartlesville City Code requires notice in the agenda, including both the present zoning classification as well as the proposed classification, according to the complaint.

“There appears to have been a pervasive attitude among the City Council members that they could ‘do whatever they wanted’ during the Public Hearing and the Council’s discussions on November 4, 2013,” the complaint states. “The notion that the City Council can ‘do whatever it wants’ fundamentally violates the intent and wording of both the State’s Open Meeting Act and the City’s own established City Ordinances.”

“The property owners only heard about this in the public hearing,” Rabin told the Examiner-Enterprise on Friday. “They voted on something that wasn’t the agenda item, and it’s also a violation of the city ordinance.”

According to Grogan, the complaint “barely touches the surface.”

“There (were) a lot of things that transpired before we got to that point,” she said. “We didn’t want it to come to this.”

City Attorney Jerry Maddux has previously said he thinks the City Council complied with the law.

“I’ve looked into it and I don’t think the Open Meeting law was violated,” Maddux told the Examiner-Enterprise in January. “We gave them notice of the time, the place and the subject matter being considered; that’s what’s required.”

According to Holland, investigators have received the complaint and “have opened an investigation and will put the facts together and will send what we learn to the district attorney.”

“It will be in his hands,” Holland said, referring to District Attorney Kevin Buchanan.

“For the record, Terry and I believe that the police department and Police Chief Tom Holland will do a good job, a fair investigation and follow the letter of the law,” Rabin said.

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